Minor in Catholic Studies

These two seminars are Sacred Heart University's academic signature common core. They are a direct reflection of the University's Mission. These seminars provide students with an understanding of the roots and development of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition as an interdisciplinary, ongoing 2,000 year conversation between the great writers, thinkers, and artists of the Tradition and the cultures in which they lived, asking fundamental questions about God, humanity, nature, and society. Using seminar pedagogy, these seminars ask students to join in this conversation and relate the texts and ideas of the seminars to students own lives and to the world in which they live.
Prerequisite: Take FYS or FYWS 125

These two seminars are Sacred Heart University's academic signature common core. They are a direct reflection of the University's Mission. These seminars provide students with an understanding of the roots and development of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition as an interdisciplinary, ongoing 2,000 year conversation between the great writers, thinkers, and artists of the Tradition and the cultures in which they lived, asking fundamental questions about God, humanity, nature, and society. Using seminar pedagogy, these seminars ask students to join in this conversation and relate the texts and ideas of the seminars to students own lives and to the world in which they live.
Prerequisite: Take CIT 201

This course is an interdisciplinary look at how Catholic thought and imagination have intersected with culture from the 1960's to the present time. We will look at texts, films, and art.

This interdisciplinary course explores the themes of sin, sainthood, and sacraments, particularly as those themes are depicted in Catholic fiction and film. The Catholic sacramental tradition is based on the belief that creation and human activities (rituals, saints' lives, etc.) can somehow manifest God's presence (i.e. grace) in a sinful world. We will discuss a diverse range of topics through a sacramental lens, as well as practices, beliefs, and debates surrounding both the sacraments and the Catholic tradition of canonization. We will particularly highlight the relationship between evil and grace in our various fictional texts, and how conversion so often entails a recognition of sin, both structural and personal. Students will be asked not only to learn common issues and symbols of the seven Catholic sacraments and the Catholic piety of sainthood, but also to reflect and discuss critically how issues raised by sacraments and sainthood continue to be relevant to their own lives and the contemporary world.

This course explores the experience of pilgrimage. Students learn in the classroom then spend ten days in Spain walking the Camino de Santiago.
Prerequisite: Take CIT-201

In this course we will examine how life's BIG Questions emerge in different popular films and television.

This course examines Catholic Social Justice in the contemporary world.

What can Broadway shows teach us about God? Does thinking about faith and doubt or what it means to be human show us anything about theatre? We know that God has always been a big-name star on stage: from Olympian deities in Greek tragedies to the prayers of singing nuns in classic musicals. The word "Broadway" describes two things. "Broadway" is a physical location-a street in Manhattan that runs through the theater district. And "Broadway" is also a style of theatrical drama and its literary afterlife as a printed script that can be performed again and again. Broadway shows strive to be commercially successful and accessible to a wide audience. Can Broadway reveal something about "God" for such a mixed and public audience? Can beloved Broadway shows help us talk about God and the common good in our shared lives today? Does God still perform on the world's stage? This seminar course looks at plays and musicals within, alongside, and through some big and controversial questions and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Taking its cue from God's presence and absence on stage and on the streets of ordinary life, we will explore theatre from the interdisciplinary perspective of Catholic Studies. Students will encounter cross-cultural religious inquiry and major performance theories, study plays and musicals by and about believers and atheists, and discuss Broadway's theological and ethical dimensions. A Catholic Studies approach to both God and Broadway invites us to consider the universal in the particular, so this course will focus on our close examination of classic and contemporary plays and musicals themselves. Seminar conversations will focus on dramatic scripts, recordings of performances, theological and theatrical interpretation theories, and our own ideas and responses

This course will offer students the chance to engage with the longer history of feminist and LGBTQ movements in the twentieth century, while at the same time immersing them in how Catholics responded to historic debates about gender and sexuality that shaped political and cultural life in this same period.

This course examines the political journey of U.S. Catholics in the period from the middle of the 20th century to the present, mixing political philosophy with discussion of key events and figures.

Do animals go to heaven? This course will focus on what salvation and heaven might mean for our furry friends, and what it means to be good stewards of the wider ecological world that Pope Francis has called "Our Common Home." We will do this by first exploring the various ways in which science and religion relate to one another, and in particular, the relationship between evolutionary theory and Catholic Theology. The Catholic Church's decision to accept evolutionary theory distinguishes it from many other branches of Christianity. In this course, we will explore some of the religious and ethical implications of this acceptance. We will be addressing a variety of important questions: what is the proper Christian response to a planet that is dying due to global warming? How are animal related to human beings, and how should they be integrated into our relationship with God? And of course, we will try to answer the age-old, yet perhaps most important question for many of us, do animals go to heaven?
Prerequisite: TAKE CIT-201

Through the Office of Volunteer Programs and Service Learning, students will be educated about the social and political issues surrounding Bridgeport, Connecticut, and its communities by engaging in and reflecting upon a number of community experiences.

This short course at SHU in Dingle examines Irish drama and spirituality through experimental and site-specific performance. Do we still believe that land and spirit can be wild with us? We will explore how stories, improvisation, and ritual can teach us, in the words of the Irish ecological mystic John Moriarty, to "walk beautifully on the earth." Ritual and performance-from a celebration of the Catholic Mass to a night at the pub after seeing a good play-can "re-wild" our own spirits in relationship to the natural world and each other. But how should we name and tell stories about our shared earth, what Pope Francis calls "our common home"? This unique course introduces the theory and practice of site-specific ritual and theatre by taking place amid the drama of waves, mountains, people, and stories of a journey to Ireland and back. We will read and discuss some major Irish plays about naming wild spirits of the land, rediscover the Gospels and Jesus' seaside storytelling through performance analysis, talk with local artists, theatre-makers, and dancers in the West of Ireland, embody some wisdom from the Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Irish context of natural beauty, and learn how to re-wild our own play with ritualizing and improvisation. Participants will work together to develop an original performance inspired by their time in Dingle, but no previous acting experience is required.

This course explores how woundedness and vulnerability shape human beings' individual identities, personal relationships, and sense of one's place in a community. At the same time, we will discuss if and when healing is possible, to what extent religion and spirituality plays a role in that healing, and what healing even means given the variety of ways that human beings are vulnerable and wounded throughout life. The course will be centered on open discussion with an interdisciplinary pedagogy. Our readings will draw from Scripture as well as other voices of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, and will cover topics such as disabilities (both physical and developmental), mental health, grief, trauma, and social marginalization. Students will be expected to engage in class discussions as well as complete a variety of writing assignments. The course fulfills the Humanistic Inquiry requirement for the Liberal Arts Exploration as we will critically examine and reflect upon fundamental concerns, issues, and topics related to the human condition of woundedness and vulnerability. We will examine and discuss these topics through a variety of genres (contemporary fiction, memoir, autobiography, history, theater, etc.) through texts by writers often (although not exclusively) from the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. With this pedagogy, students will engage the CIT's interdisciplinary heritage of writing and reflecting on various forms of disability, woundedness, and vulnerability.

Drawing from the values and perspectives of Catholic Social Teaching through the lens of Social Work practice, this course critically examines social justice concepts and develops intercultural skills needed to address issues of social justice with individuals and diverse communities. Through a cultural immersion experience abroad, students will be engaged with local communities and participate in community-based learning opportunities which address issues such as: human rights, human dignity, solidarity with the poor, and the common good.

Can beauty save the world as Dostoevsky once claimed? Can beauty make a difference in a world that is often ugly and unjust - can it even "save" us? In this course, we will explore ways of interpreting beauty that are more than skin deep. Drawing on artists, cultural critics, theologians, and ethicists, we will discuss how beauty has served as both a tool of oppression and an inspiration for ethical action.

Catholic intellectuals and jurists have exerted deep influence on political and legal traditions in Europe as well as the United States. This course examines Catholic perspectives on law and justice in terms of their historical trajectory as well as their impact on contemporary American society.

Leading lives that matter, knowing our purpose and becoming who we want to be are central to living the good life. The years in college and emerging adult are a time when we think from our deepest self about what we most will value and desire for our lives. Yet these years can also be confusing and finding how to build the most meaningful life possible for us can be challenging. This course uses the timeless writings and wisdom of great thinkers-philosophers, psychologists, religious thinkers, artists and writers, professional leaders-to help us think through real life cases that will guide us to finding the good life of meaning, purpose, and faith that we seek. Students will: 1. Read, understand and discuss the works of great thinkers in philosophy, literature, psychology, religion, and the arts--classical to contemporary--- who write about living a good life. 2. Analyze and write about the real life case studies that explore the questions, issues, values, and beliefs about what makes the good life. 3. Develop their own guides that chart a path for the good life. 4. Develop writing, speaking, and thinking abilities.

This interdisciplinary course explores the unique combination of historical, cultural, intellectual, and religious elements that combined in the development of the Zapatista movement. The Zapatistas announced themselves to the world in 1994 when their guerrilla army of masked Indigenous Mayans took over several towns in southern Mexico, saying, "We are the product of 500 years of struggle." We will examine this 500 year struggle for Mayan rights, from the Conquest of the Americas to the Mexican Revolution, through the 20th century and culminating in the Zapatista Uprising and their ongoing struggle for autonomy from the Mexican government. Along the way we will study the Zapatistas' varied blend of influences: Emiliano Zapata, hero of the Revolution; clandestine cells of Marxist intellectuals and revolutionaries; traditional Mayan spirituality; and Catholic liberation theology, brought to the Mayans by a radical bishop. Finally, we will study the Zapatistas themselves, looking at the history of their founding and training of a guerrilla army, their writing, their unique political philosophy, their ecological vision, their striving for political and economic autonomy, and their understanding of liberation. This course will challenge students to wrestle with these questions: is the Zapatista movement a success or a failure? Is it a helpful model or a doomed Quixotic dream? Does the Zapatista struggle have anything to teach us in our own efforts to affirm human dignity and to struggle for a more just society?